Oliver Battershall

The 400 Blows (1959) 4.5/5
Confiscate my Carhartt jumper, report my Letterboxd account, remove any reference to me liking cinema from my Hinge profile. Because it’s taken me this long to watch The 400 Blows, or indeed any 35mm film projection for the first time. Thank you Broadway for allowing me to reclaim my credentials. This was brilliant and bursting with infectiously mischievous whimsy. It’s balanced out with enough social realism to feel grounded but still upbeat. The highlight was when a pre-teen gets caught smoking and his dad just tuts and says he’ll take it out of his pocket money. No one does it like the French.

Tourist Trap (1979) 3.5/5
You don’t need me to tell you that there’s an innate creepiness to mannequins. In terms of regular worldly items they’re about as far into the uncanny valley as you get. Honestly I feel like Mannequin Horror deserves to be as ubiquitous as any other horror trope, since I Feel Fantastic and that one Doctor Who episode fully terrified me as a kid. Anyway I picked this film out because of the cool poster, and the mannequin visuals throughout this were a real highlights. Their little whispery sound effects were great too. This had the potential to be FANTASTIC if it was more exploitation-y and ramped up the gore instead of sometimes choosing a more generic approach. Still a good watch though, really properly creepy at times.

The Cabin in the Woods (2011) 4.5/5
Hell yeah! Great fun from start to finish. A cool meta comedy-horror that doesn’t take itself too seriously and keeps the gimmick fresh with good laughs and evolving stakes. The second half of this is (ironically) so joyously unpredictable.

Risky Business (1983) 4.5/5
I’ve had Talking Heads’ Swamp stuck in my head, so naturally I thought I should get round to watching Risky Business. What a gem of the 80s. Tom Cruise man, has anyone else looked so magnetic at 21 years old. That is a MOVIE STAR. Rebecca De Mornay is absolutely hypnotic too. This was a really breezy 100 minutes that was also randomly hilarious at points (“I’ve got a trig midterm tomorrow and I’m being chased by Guido the killer pimp!”) The Tangerine Dream score really gave me the sense of anticipation for something, an adulthood just beyond the horizon, which was really fitting and infectuous in a way I haven’t felt since watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I liked this almost as much as that!

Rebels of the Neon God (1992) 3/5
Very cool title but sadly barely anything actually happens and I didn’t really feel anything below the pleasant visuals.

Planes (2013) 2.5/5
Like most things I watch this came from the trusty Random Movie Roulette Letterboxd list. A kids movie after my two skips, great. A check of Twitter 10 minutes in and Forest are about to sack Nuno. So now I’m spending my Friday evening watching a Cars spinoff while my heart is filled with misery. Anyway, a review. This was fine, but compared to Cars it takes much less time trying to develop fun characters and interesting backstories, going for something more generic which was never going to be anything except “fine”.

Interstellar (2014) 5/5
I’ve come to Lincoln for a night. It got to around 6pm and I’d already done all I could be bothered to do for the day so I looked at what the local cinemas were showing. Interstellar in IMAX at the Odeon? Sure. It’s one of those movies that I always regretted watching in very non-cinematic circumstances originally (about 8 years ago) so let’s give it a shot. Bloody hell. I’m not in the best headspace to pick apart everything to wax lyrical about so I’ll just say some things. I never ever thought a movie could emotionally affect me like this. From the tesseract scene onwards it was floods of tears. I was absolutely drenched when the credits rolled. The lights came up immediately and I had to quickly grab my jacket to maintain my nonchalant façade. Everyone is incredible and Zimmer deserves a Nobel prize for that score. The power of love pervades through five bastard dimensions. It doesn’t feel quite right to say this at the moment because I feel completely annihilated but in the morning I’ll be confident: This is my new favourite film of all time.